Why Do We Have Less Chromosomes Than Some Plants?

Humans have 46 chromosomes. Potatoes (and chimpanzees) have 48. But chromosome count says nothing about an organism's complexity: hermit crabs have more than 200! Chromosomes can duplicate or fuse throughout a species' tenure on Earth, and this doesn't typically have any adverse effects. This is because neither process fundamentally changes an organism's genetic material-it just shuffles some of it to a different place, or creates a copy.